What if … We don’t need bodies?

Uploading our minds onto computers could be the future. But cutting ties with our animal roots would raise ethical questions for which we don't yet have answers

By Anil Ananthaswamy

Is anybody in there? (Image: Skizzomat)

MINDS result from bodies, but that link can be compromised. If I severed my spinal cord at the neck, I’d get no inputs from most of my body, says Michael Graziano, a neuroscientist at Princeton University. “But I’m still a person, I still have experience, I can still think.”

What if we could separate mind from body entirely? Many now believe that we will transfer our minds on to computers, whether in a matter of decades or hundreds of years. “I would say that it’s not only possible, it’s inevitable,” says Graziano.

What would life as an upload be like? We’d still need outside stimulation. Cut off entirely, a brain would suffer sensory deprivation, says Anders Sandberg at the University of Oxford. “It’s going to fall asleep, then hallucinate and probably gently go mad. You need to give it a way of interacting with the world, although it doesn’t have to be the real world.”

Being able to transfer minds into a computer would change how we valued a life. Having multiple backup copies of ourselves might make life less precious. “You kill one of them, so what?” says Graziano. “There’s a whole bunch more.” Murder may no longer be a heinous crime when we can resurrect the dead. The same goes for victims of freak accidents, says Sandberg. Just boot up the last save and the only thing lost may be a few recent memories.

“Murder may no longer be a heinous crime when we can resurrect the dead”

And if you think we are living in a hyperconnected world …

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